Posts By Author » Debra Saunders

Reviving a Gun Law That Didn’t Work
18 Dec 2012 12:03 am

On Friday, a heavily armed young man walked into a Connecticut elementary school and murdered 20 first-graders and six adults before he killed himself. Even in a country inured to gun violence, this crime is too heinous to contemplate.
Now the question is: Does Washington pass a bad law just to do something, anything, even something that doesn’t enhance public safety?
I write this as a former assault-weapons ban supporter, who observed that the 1994 federal assault-weapons ban, which expired in 2004, didn’t reduce gun violence in America. Nor, apparently, did Connecticut’s …

A Smart Conservative Position on War on Drugs
16 Dec 2012 12:02 am

“Mandatory sentences breed injustice,” Judge Roger Vinson told the New York Times. A Ronald Reagan appointee to the federal bench in Florida, Vinson was railing against a federal system that forced him to sentence a 27-year-old single mother to prison life without parole because her dealer ex-boyfriend had stored cocaine in her house.
Note to D.C. Republicans: This would be a great time to take on the excesses of the war on drugs.
The Times was writing about conservatives, including Jeb Bush and former Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson, who advocate for smarter, …

Cal Logo 2.0: Let There be UC Lite
13 Dec 2012 12:02 am

When you think about it, it’s amazing that the high-minded swells at the University of California didn’t unveil a new logo sooner. The old logo, which will continue to appear on diplomas and official letters, features the school motto, “Let there be light.” Ancient. An English translation of a Latin phrase. And a book. Dead-tree lit. 1868? Dead white guys. Under a star. Too militaristic.
But it wasn’t political correctness that relegated the old UC seal to the dusty top shelf reserved for weighty documents only. The new logo, explained UC …

Airbrushing an Impeachment
11 Dec 2012 12:03 am

It has been a banner year for Bill Clinton. The former president delivered a galvanizing speech, deemed by many on the left to lay out the best argument for re-electing President Obama, at the Democratic National Convention. During the Republican primary, Newt Gingrich and other GOP hopefuls frequently talked up the Clinton-era economy and the former president’s ability to reach across the aisle. The Sunday New York Times ran a front-page story on whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will run for the Oval Office in 2016 — and it …

Secret to Obama’s Success: A Great Ground Game
9 Dec 2012 12:03 am

President Obama won re-election in part because his crack campaign team understood 2012 voters and put together an impressive ground operation. Out of professional respect, Republicans should refrain from cracking jokes about the president’s erstwhile profession, community organizing. That’s what I took away from recordings of Harvard’s Institute of Politics quadrennial presidential campaign autopsy, which were released Monday.
Team Obama conducted nightly surveys of 9,000 likely voters in 10 battleground states. Because of those surveys, campaign manager Jim Messina told the gathering, “We thought we knew exactly where the electorate was.” …

Save a Life, Mr. President — Deport Unlicensed Driver
2 Dec 2012 12:02 am

On Nov. 16, 2010, an unlicensed driver named Roberto Galo took a left turn at Harrison and 16th streets and hit motorcyclist Drew Rosenberg. After Galo backed over Rosenberg’s body, the law-school student died. A jury convicted Galo for manslaughter and driving without a license. After serving 43 days in jail, he was released on home detention.
Don Rosenberg of Westlake Village — in Los Angeles County — blames San Francisco politics for his son’s death. He also fears that the like-minded Obama administration will shield unlicensed drivers to the detriment …

Dems’ Unwritten No-Cuts Pledge
30 Nov 2012 12:02 am

As the “fiscal cliff” looms, editorial writers and Beltway commentators have turned their sights on their favorite enemy — tax-foe Grover Norquist’s no-new-taxes pledge signed by a weighty majority of GOP members of Congress. If Republicans had not been scared into signing the pledge, the pack laments, D.C. pols would compromise, and all would be well with the world.
I’ve had issues with the Norquist pledge in the past. Its biggest downside is that it allows Congress to spend with abandon — as long as Washington doesn’t pay for it.
The problem …

On Mercy, Obama is a Gridlock of One
27 Nov 2012 12:03 am

President Obama likes to complain about gridlock in Washington and blame Republicans for keeping him from doing his job. As president, he has the unfettered executive power to pardon individuals convicted of federal crimes or commute their sentences. Yet, while his 2008 campaign called for a review of federal mandatory minimum sentences to reduce the number of needlessly warehoused nonviolent drug offenders, Obama has pardoned a mere 22 offenders who served their sentences and commuted only one sentence. When it comes to acts of mercy, Obama has produced his own …

Confessions of a Non-Foodie
20 Nov 2012 12:03 am

I am the opposite of a foodie. My favorite green vegetable is the pea — fresh or frozen. My second favorite is celery. I like iceberg lettuce. At restaurants, I have been known to look longingly at the children’s menu.
When President George H. W. Bush admitted he did not like broccoli, I felt as one with him. When the Reagan administration declared ketchup to be a vegetable, I knew it was true. I don’t eat ketchup.
I am not proud of my eating habits. In high school, my black studies class went …

Unlicensed To Kill
11 Nov 2012 12:02 am

Drew Rosenberg became a victim of San Francisco’s sanctuary-city policies Nov. 16, 2010. The second-year law student was riding his motorcycle in rush-hour traffic, when a car driven by an unlicensed driver made a left turn and hit him. That evening, Don Rosenberg of Westlake Village, Calif., received the phone call every parent dreads. His precious son was dead.
Then another nightmare unfolded.
As Rosenberg investigated driver Roberto Galo’s background, he discovered that San Francisco’s sanctuary-city policies have served as an enabler for dangerous drivers.
Rosenberg sees his son’s death as highly preventable. …

I’m Not Bitter — Much
8 Nov 2012 12:04 am

President Barack Obama’s re-election puts Republicans on notice. No matter what we do, the media will portray us as extreme, venal, stupid or anti-woman — if not as individuals, then guilty by association. The GOP nominee must bear the burden of admittedly medieval statements on pregnancy and rape — uttered by Senate hopefuls Richard Mourdock in Indiana and Todd Akin of Missouri. Mitt Romney renounced the statements — and still they tarnished the GOP brand.
On the other side, all Democrats are moderates. Party bigs need never explain why Elizabeth Warren, …

Another Drug War Nightmare
6 Nov 2012 12:03 am

The government has the power to seize your assets for a crime you did not commit. That’s essentially the argument being made in a Boston federal court this week as the U.S. Department of Justice and Tewksbury (Mass.) Police Department work to take Motel Caswell away from its owner, Russ Caswell.
The libertarian-leaning legal team Institute for Justice took on Caswell’s case pro bono, attorney Scott Bullock told me, because this case “is really taking civil forfeiture where it has not gone in the past.”
The government wants to take Caswell’s motel, …

President’s Power of Pardon
4 Nov 2012 12:02 am

President Bill Clinton used his presidential pardon power in July 2000 to commute the sentence of Serena Nunn, who was sentenced to 15 years for a first-time nonviolent drug offense when she was 19. The pardon shaved three years off Nunn’s sentence. Nunn told me over the phone, “I thought then that it was a great thing that a president used his power to help an average person.”
Nunn later graduated from college and then the University of Michigan Law School. Last month, having passed a character fitness test, Nunn passed …

The War on “Obama Defectors”
1 Nov 2012 12:02 am

NARAL Pro-Choice America is targeting what it calls “Obama defectors”: female voters who supported Barack Obama in 2008 but now are considering voting for Mitt Romney.
Defectors? That’s a term usually reserved for Syrian troops who go AWOL or adults who escaped the yoke of authoritarian regimes. The left’s unabashed use of the word “defector” suggests a feeling of ownership — as if, having voted for Obama once, female voters are conscripts, property of the (all kneel) Democratic Party.
Democrats usually are masters at co-opting language. This year, under the Affordable Care …

Is There a Benghazi Media Cover-up?
30 Oct 2012 12:03 am

Is there a mainstream media cover-up of an Obama administration cover-up in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans dead?
Since Sept. 12, the San Francisco Chronicle, where I work, has run about 67 stories, items, editorials, columns and letters that mention Benghazi. In September, I criticized Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and White House press secretary Jay Carney for claiming that an anti-Islam video had incited the attack, not al-Qaida-inspired terrorists.
Some readers tell me that they see the Chronicle’s failure …

Romney Can Get the Job Done
28 Oct 2012 12:02 am

President Barack Obama is charismatic and inspiring, but he won office too early in his career, and he is a victim of his own success. Sweeping into office with majorities in the Senate and House, Obama quickly passed a Democrats-only stimulus package that didn’t deliver as promised. Then he signed a health care package that increased the burden of health care on private employers and failed to attract a single GOP vote.
Obama’s Affordable Care Act helped unseat moderate and other Democrats who had voted for the package, handing the House …

League of One-Sided Women Voters
25 Oct 2012 12:06 am

The League of Women Voters boasts that it presents “unbiased nonpartisan information about elections, the voting process, and issues.” Phyllis Loya always assumed that meant the organization believed in presenting both sides of issues to its members, but recently she discovered she was wrong.
In 2005, Alexander Hamilton, 18, and Andrew Moffett, 17, robbed a Wells Fargo branch in a Pittsburg, Calif., Raley’s supermarket. Loya’s son, Larry Lasater, then 35, was the cop who had the bad luck to find them after they crashed a stolen getaway car. As Lasater chased …

Obama vs. Romney, the Peacenik
24 Oct 2012 12:03 am

President Barack Obama won the final presidential debate because it was on foreign policy, and the president’s foreign policy — unlike his domestic spending — is popular with the American people.
Mitt Romney didn’t win the debate, but he did undercut Team Obama. Obamaland spent the day hitting Romney for being too warlike, too much like George W. Bush. Operatives warned of Romney’s “bluster.”
Romney changed the game as he talked up peace and said he wanted to be a partner with China. He graciously congratulated Obama for killing Osama bin Laden …

Prop 30 — Delphic Oracle Pronouncement
21 Oct 2012 12:02 am

When he ran for governor of California in 2010, Jerry Brown traded on cryptic pledges — most notably, “no new taxes without voter approval” — that, like pronouncements by the oracle at Delphi, could mean whatever listeners wanted to hear. Most insiders figured that Brown wanted to raise taxes but was too cagey to tell voters, who had rejected a tax-increasing ballot measure by a 2-1 ratio in 2009. It is because Brown was so darn clever that Californians now are stuck with a Hobson’s choice — vote for his …

Hell Is Paved With Obama’s Intentions
18 Oct 2012 12:06 am

My theory as to why President Barack Obama fell flat during the first debate: He looked at the crowd and the cameras and thought:
“I’ve been saying this stuff for five years, and I don’t believe myself anymore. I don’t have a strong plan to jump-start the moribund economy. Come on, everyone knows that presidents aren’t responsible for private-sector job creation. I don’t really want to cut the deficit. This isn’t fun anymore.”
In the second presidential debate with Mitt Romney on Tuesday night, Obama brought more energy, but he couldn’t rustle …

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